


The lights will not catch you

by EmmaArthur



Series: Whumptober 2019 [15]
Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Abuse, Alex Whump, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, First Meeting, Internalized Homophobia, Jesse Manes is a War Crime, M/M, Past Suicide Attempt, Teenagers, Whumptober, suicide ideation, teen camp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-17
Updated: 2019-10-17
Packaged: 2020-12-21 06:37:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21070520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmmaArthur/pseuds/EmmaArthur
Summary: AU. Alex and Michael meet the summer before their senior year, at a troubled teen wilderness survival camp.





	The lights will not catch you

**Author's Note:**

> Whumptober day 16: **Scars**.
> 
> This is based on a prompt by ninswhimsy and lambourn : Michael never comes back to Roswell. He and Alex meet for the first time at a troubled teen wilderness survival camp they got shipped to. Michael is there for stealing (he was starving) and Alex is there after a failed suicide attempt that embarrassed Jesse.
> 
> It's kinda heavy, so heed the warnings.
> 
> [past suicide attempt, suicide ideation, internalized homophobia and psychophobia, mentions of abuse and murder attempt]

Alex bites on his finger hard to muffle the sobs when he hears someone come closer. He looks up to check that he's mostly hidden by bushes, and he hopes whoever it is will leave him alone. The dirt floor he's sitting on is damp and uncomfortable, but he's seen worse, and at least it's quiet out here, half a mile away from the camp. He even managed to hide his iPod from the strict monitors, so he can listen to music without being bothered.

The person isn't ready to leave him alone, though. He heard the steps come straight toward him, and a body slump to the floor behind him.

“Hey, you okay?”

Alex recognizes the voice, from a boy with curly hair in the same group as him. Michael, he thinks. The boy stands out even more painfully than Alex does. He doesn't seem to own any clothes suitable for wilderness survival, or maybe any decent clothes at all, so he's been wearing torn jeans and the same threadbare tee-shirt since they got here two days ago.

Alex raises a hand to his face, ostensibly to remove an earbud but mostly to dry the tears on his cheeks, and turns. “What are you doing here?” he asks.

“I could ask you the same question,” Michael says.

Alex shrugs. “It's quieter,” he says.

“I heard some of what the other guys said,” Michael says quietly.

Alex winces. He'd hoped, for a second, that he could talk to someone who doesn't think he's a perverted sick person, but apparently he won't have that much luck.

“I don't agree with them, if that's what's worrying you,” Michael adds. “I don't care if you're gay.”

The only person who's ever said that to Alex was Liz. Before she turned her back on him to start dating Kyle Valenti. He bites his lip. “You're not afraid I'm going to try to rape you in your sleep?”

“It's such a ridiculous notion,” Michael says. “I'm probably not even your type.”

Alex looks at him a little more closely, and blushes, because Michael is wrong. Alex doesn't know if he really has a type, since he doesn't have a large pool of guys who don't bully him to hit on back in Roswell, but if he did, Michael would definitely qualify by the curls alone.

“What are you listening to?” Michael asks.

Alex looks at his feet, almost embarrassed. At school, he's embraced the emo style because his father hates it, and because there's no one left in the small town high school who doesn't already know him as the gay, weird kid who comes to school with bruises on his face, so he's going to stand out whatever he does. But here, where he doesn't know anyone and the monitors frown in displeasure every time he shows up, being different feels embarrassing. “Nothing, whatever,” he mutters.

“No, tell me!” Michael pushes.

Alex almost wants to lie, pick a random popular band all his friends listen to, but something in him balks. “Tokio Hotel,” he admits.

“Never heard of it.”

Alex doesn't know what pushes him to elaborate, instead of just shrugging and walking away. He's not supposed to make friends, here. He doesn't want to make friends, especially not ones who will just turn their backs on him later. “It's a German band,” he says. “Kind of...alternative rock?”

“Can I listen?” Michael asks.

Alex hesitates, then gives him an earbud. Michael smiles in thanks and puts it in his ear. They listen for a minute in silence, until the song changes. Alex feels his heart start to beat faster and he pulls on the earbud, without thinking. Not this song. Michael can't listen to it.

_Über den Dächern, ist es so kalt, und so still,_ it starts in his ear.  _(On the roofs, it's so cold, and so quiet.)_

Alex shudders, and quickly turns off the music.

“What's wrong?” Michael asks, watching him curiously.

“Nothing,” Alex shakes his head, his hand going to his left wrist.

“Okay. It's not really my jam, but it's not bad, the lead singer has a good voice.”

“Yeah he does,” Alex answers with relief, launching into a speech about the merits of the twin singer and guitarist. “They've released an album in English too, but it's just not as good, the German really sounds better.”

“What do they sing about?”

Alex shrugs. “It's kinda dark, often about solitude, or, you know, pain.”

“Is that the band?” Michael asks, grabbing Alex's iPod from his hand.

“Hey!” Alex yells, to cover his flinch at the touch.

“It's okay, I just wanted to see,” Michael raises his arms in defense. “Sorry.”

Alex wordlessly hands him the iPod, hoping that he won't do what Kyle did to his cellphone back in January and crush it under his heel. Michael peers at the tiny picture of the band on the album cover.

“They look kinda hot under all the makeup,” he says.

Alex blinks. Did Michael just say what he thinks he said?

“Hot?” he asks.

“Hey, you don't have the monopoly on looking at guys,” Michael says in mock offense.

“I just thought−” Alex splutters.

“I get it,” Michael waves him off. “You're from a small town, aren't you?”

“Yeah. So you're gay too?”

“No, bisexual. I like girls too.”

“Oh, okay,” Alex shrugs. He's heard the word before, but mostly as an abstract concept. His world has long been divided between straight people one one side, and Alex, alone, on the other. Sometimes he forgets there even are other gay guys, let alone people with different sexual orientations.

“So, why are you here?” Michael asks, after another moment of silence. He seems determined to talk, although Alex isn't exactly encouraging him. He's even spilling out secrets−because how could liking guys not be a secret, if you have a choice in the matter?

Alex frowns.

“Come on, this isn't rich people summer camp,” Michael rolls his eyes. “We're all here because someone got tired of us, right? Here, I'll start. I got caught stealing.”

“Stealing?” Alex repeats. “What did you steal?”

“Tacos. My foster father kicked me out again and I was sleeping in my truck. I was hungry.”

“You're in the system?”

“Always been. As long as I can remember,” Michael answers. “You too?”

Alex shakes his head. “No, I live with my father.”

“So how did you end up here?”

Alex's eyes fall, almost against his will, to his wrist. “I, uh...my father's not a...nice person. It's like you said, he got tired of me.”

But Michael must have picked something up in his gaze, because he takes Alex's hand in his and pulls. His sleeve hitches up, and Alex wishes they'd let him keep the leather bracelets he normally wears, because suddenly the still-healing scars are in plain sight.

“Are those what I think they are?” Michael asks.

Alex takes back his arm with a scowl. He's stuck. This is the last thing he wants to talk about, and he doesn't understand why Michael hasn't already bolted. He turns his head away and doesn't answer.

“What happened?” Michael asks in a murmur. His tone has turned dark and serious.

“Doesn't matter,” Alex mutters, bringing up his knees in front of him as a buffer. Michael is too close, it's almost stifling. Scary.

Michael must realize−he seems very good at reading the room−because he scoots back a little. “I have scars of my own,” he offers. “I never−you know, but...sometimes I wish I was that brave.”

“No,” Alex shakes his head, feeling cold. “It's not bravery. I'm not brave. I fucking failed at it, even.”

Brave is being a soldier, going to war. Like his brothers. Alex is a coward. A perverted, sick coward.

“Shouldn't you be in a...hospital or something, though? Instead of here?”

“My father wouldn't let them. It was...a month before the end of the school year, so he grounded me to my room for the rest of the year and then he sent me here. So I could learn to become a real man and stop embarrassing him,” Alex says, quoting his father's words. He doesn't talk about the rest, how he made Alex clean up his own blood in the bathtub the day he came home from the hospital, or how he came to his room every night, to quiz him on his duties. Alex tried to resist at first, because saying _I will give up my perversion_ and _I will never look at men with lust_ over and over made him want to retch, but every little act of resistance earned him a beating, one his father didn't have to make inconspicuous since he was staying home. He still has the bruises and cracked rib from the last one.

And the long scars on his wrist, that will probably never completely fade, to remind him that he failed. That he was too weak to get away.

He scratches at the scars absently.

He realizes he's spaced out when he feels Michael's hand on his knee. He flinches, and Michael removes it immediately.

“I had a foster mother once who tried to drown me,” he says. “I almost wanted her to succeed, but my body still fought her.”

“Are they all that bad?” Alex asks. He's honestly curious, and feeling compassion for this boy, just as lost as he is. It's the first time he's felt anything that wasn't nausea or sorrow in months. It feels strangely good.

“That one was particularly cruel,” Michael shrugs. “Most just ignore me until I get picked up by the cops or something, and then they send me back. I'm here because no one wanted me for the summer.”

“That's rough,” Alex says.

“Nah, it's just life,” Michael answers. “I'll be able to live on my own soon, anyway. I'll buy a trailer, and I'll try to find my brother and sister.”

“You have siblings?” Alex asks.

Michael nods. “I don't know if we're related, we were just found together. We were in the same home for a while, but they got adopted.”

Alex nods. “I have three brothers, but they're like my father,” he says. “They're all in the military now.”

“Are you going to enlist too?” Michael asks.

Alex looks down. “It's what my father wants,” he answers.

“Is it what you want?”

“I don't know,” Alex says. A year ago, he would have said no. He wanted to become a professional skateboarder, or maybe a musician. Now he can't imagine living through senior year, let alone what he might do after graduation. “What I want doesn't really matter.”

Michael looks at him for a moment in silence, as if thinking.

“I think it does,” he says, finally. “What you did−” he gestures to Alex's wrist. “I don't have the right words, but...it was like, taking back control. Making your own decisions. Right?”

Alex stares at him. All he thought about, that day, was that it would finally be over. That he'd be free. He shakes his head.

“It matters,” is all Michael says.

What does he want?

He wants…

Michael is really close again, and Alex lets his knees fall back to the floor. He bends a little, unsure. Michael meets him in the middle.

It's only when they pull apart that Alex realizes his hands have made their way to Michael's hair, burying themselves in his curls. One of Michael's hand in on his neck, and the other braced on his thigh.

“Do you want that?” Michael murmurs, a soft smile on his face.

“We can't−” Alex starts.

“No one has to know.”

“I don't−I can't−” Alex hesitates. “I don't know.”

“You don't have to decide tonight,” Michael smiles. “We're here for a month, right? I'll still be here tomorrow.”

Alex takes a breath, and nods shakily. The kiss was...it made him feel things. It scares him. Being numb is easier.

“I'm going to go,” he says, standing up. He readjusts his sleeve carefully, until he's sure the scar isn't visible. The other boys would have a field day if they found out.

Michael also stands up, but Alex can't stand to look him in the eyes.

“Just, uh, Alex?” Michael hesitates. He hasn't called him by name until now. Alex wasn't even sure he knew what his name was.

“Yes?” he looks back.

“I'm kinda glad that you failed,” Michael says.

Alex stays frozen for a moment, blinking back tears.

“Just−maybe remember that,” Michael adds.

Alex nods slowly, and puts his earbuds back in his ear, walking away.

_Die Welt da unten zählt nicht. Bitte spring nicht_

_(The world under here doesn't count. Please don't jump.)_

He's wished, so many times this year, that he had someone to say this to him. Something to hang on to.

Maybe he does, now.

**Author's Note:**

> I never thought I'd be using a Tokio Hotel song in a fanfic lol. But it's the perfect time period for Alex to love that band, and I kinda poured some personal stuff into this one. The title is an English translation of a line the same song used in the fic, Spring Nicht.
> 
> I hope you liked this! I think I'll write a sequel at some point this month. Tell me what you think!


End file.
